


Almost Only Counts in Horseshoes (and Demon Hunting)

by Rori_Teagan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rori_Teagan/pseuds/Rori_Teagan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not every bump in the dark comes out biting. When Dean is on the brink of doing something truly stupid, the sandman steps in and he gets a glimpse of what could have been, what never was, and why destiny is just another word for giving up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back on a weekly posting schedule after the fic that ate my life (spn_j2_bigbang2013). Look out for updates: amazon.com/author/simone

Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero.  
\-- Marc Brown

__________

Sam finds him in Arizona. It’s nearly dusk and the tired sun is setting in blazing reds and oranges, lighting up the evening sky in a bruise of color that hurts to look at. It bypasses his retinas altogether and pangs somewhere deep in his chest, but he can’t avert his eyes. And for once he’s not sure if it’s the full weight of _Dean_ , or the sheer weight of where he is. Or maybe a combination of them both, because really, the Grand Canyon, Dean?

He’s exactly where Sam expected and yet the surprise of his brother, here, standing on the edge in that antithesis of subtle blending of metaphorical with literal like only Dean can manage without coming off a pompous, melodramatic whiner cry-baby... It leaves him breathless.

Or maybe it’s just that with each hour the likelihood decreased just that bit more that he’d even find Dean. That maybe by the time he did, it _would_ be just an outer-covering, a reminder of what Sam and Lucifer, and the angels, and circumstance, and their father all collided to accomplish: the final breaking of Dean Winchester.

With each passing second since he went to the car for – Christ, he can’t even remember anymore… supplies? A breath of air? What dumbass lie did Sam swallow because it was easier than admitting Dean was so beyond Sam’s reach that they were in different stratospheres?

He tries to start talking, but every word catches in his throat. He doesn’t deserve it, maybe never has, but just like always Dean saves him again.   

“How’d you find me?” Dean’s voice is gravely soft.

Sam sighs and runs a hand through his hair, tangles and cowlicks sweated to his forehead, personal hygiene has taken a backseat these past couple of days.

“Luck mostly.”

_And I know you. I’ve known you all my life._

Dean looks over briefly, not amused.

“Okay, I called everyone we’d ever even breathed on in the last five years.”

Though really, he should’ve started with Lisa. How’d he not see Dean was longing for domesticity? How has been so blind for so long? Why did he need to be told where his brother was?

“See, I told you keeping all those numbers would be useful,” Sam adds for the sake of something to fill the silence.

“Well, now that you’ve found me, Marc Summers, you can just turn right back around.” 

His brother looks worn, tired, the circles under his eyes aren’t new, neither is the gauntness of his cheeks or the grey sheen that’s settled over his skin like a bodysuit, like his very blood is pumping grey instead of red. He still stands straight where anyone else would be slumped, back stiff, arms relaxed, hands curled loosely not tightened into fists. But his eyes…When he looks over they’re not even pleading anymore, they’re blank and empty. Dean has never been blank and empty.

“You know I can’t do that, Dean.”

If not for Castiel’s assurances, Sam would have thought he was too late; might have thought he was looking at Michael in a Dean-suit.

Maybe he’s been the fool, pretending he’s known this brother, that this is the same one that fed him and told him bedtime stories, and cleaned skinned knees, and put Nair in his shampoo.

But looking at Dean he can’t see anyone else either. This is the same brother that coated his pants in itching powder, could take a walkman and turn it into a sophisticated piece of un-invented machinery but couldn’t work out facebook to save his life….sold his soul to hell so that Sam could live.

Dean…Dean is all he’s got, the Dean of Barbie christmasses and “yo Sammy” and Black Sabbath on cassette.

Sam approaches, arms to his sides, palms up, beseeching, “I want you to understand before you decide anything. You had Dad. I had me.”

Dean turns then, his expression is fierce, one chromosome away from a snarl and his eyes don’t resemble a wax doll’s anymore; the manic fire that burns within them is no more comforting.    

“You ungrateful little shit,” he growls. “I was there every minute of every day, I made you my _whole_ life—“

And he did, and he had, every moment that was ever important, every second that meant a damn. Birthdays and crappy holidays celebrated Winchester style with little fanfare and even less hoorah. Graduations and straight “A” report cards. First day of school, first lost tooth, first kiss, first hunt.

“I know that, Dean,” Sam says soft and low, his own anger simmering for a little boy who never had a chance to have a life for his own. That circumstance and authority figures and destiny and fate fought together to kill. A beautiful spirit that deserved so much better than what he got.

And fuck _himself;_ past tense has no place in this conversation, Dean’s not gone yet.

“That’s not what I’m saying. Will you shut up and just listen for a minute?”

Dean turns back around, jaw clenching.

“You had Dad,” Sam begins again, “not in the way that any of us wanted him, but you had him all the same. You were his second in command. All those times I accused you of being the good little soldier, Dean, you don’t know what I would’ve given for it to have been me. You loved what he loved, you got him, and he was so proud of you. He— He trusted you, he _gave_ me to you, handed me over to your care like I was just this extra kid he found lying around that he didn’t need.”

Like he was this strange little creature the Dad had somehow been roped into caring for with no manual, no interest, and no practical experience.

“He had one son and then me, an heir and a spare, and I knew that I was some useless lump that could never be for him what you were. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much I wanted to be. Hunts scared me to death, each new motel room with the stained sheets and the cigarette burns on the rugs made me feel a little dirtier, each new school during the middle of the year when everyone already knew their teacher and their classrooms and their schedule, and me the odd chunky boy with the salvation army hand me downs and his dad that was always either too drunk or too many damn miles away to show up for parents night. Each night I stayed up in bed surrounded by a circle of salt and a .45 on my lap, index finger twitching at the trigger every time the walls settled, while I wondered how long I should wait before I couldn’t pretend you and Dad just weren’t coming back. It ate away at me, Dean. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself like it. I couldn’t pretend. And I knew Dad resented me for that. I was a disappointment and a screw-up and I could never -- I could never be you. “

The whole time Dean gazes out at the canyon; the only sign he hears _every last word_ , the rigidity in his shoulders.

“And you--You were everything to me Dean, you _are_ everything, but you couldn’t be my dad, you’re only four years older. You were my big brother and I adored you, you don’t know how much I wanted to be everything you were, how much I counted on you. But you were my big brother, you had Dad, you didn’t need me. And he didn’t want me. So yeah, Flagstaff was a freakin’ adventure. For once I didn’t have to try to be anything else, I didn’t have to bite my tongue, I didn’t have to pretend, for a week _I_ determined my life. Not a hunt, not Dad, not some supernatural creature or some stranger’s possessed dog five states away. And yes, it was easier pushing the thought of you to the side than wallowing in how much I missed you. Because you know what, Dean? Leaving you behind? That was a hell of a lot easier than having the only person in the world that gave a damn if you stopped breathing in the middle of the night or woke up in the morning tell you he didn’t choose you. And there was no way, there was no way you would have ever chosen me over Dad.”

Dean shoots a sideway glance, mouth open in ready denial. Sam doesn’t realize how much he still needs to hear that denial until he’s inhaling his next breath and relief is settling into his body.

“I’m not saying it was true, I’m telling you what I felt. I never called from Stanford because I was a coward. Dad said don’t come back; I didn’t want to give you a chance to say it too.  That’s how I felt then. I don’t feel that way now. It hasn’t been about Dad for a long time. “

They’re silent for a very long time, the night settling around them like a blanket. For the first time in what feels like years…maybe since the Mystery Spot …that blanket isn’t trying to smother them.

Finally, Dean clears his throat and says gruffly, “I wasn’t exactly well represented in your fantasy forever-after, Robin.”

Dean looks over at him and Sam sees there’s a subtle change in his expression. There’s a spark. World-weary, exhausted, clinging by a thread…but a spark nonetheless is still there. He looks at Sam and Sam stares back and for the first time in ages they read each other correctly, like they used to, and Sam knows that Dean knows the confusion on his brother’s face is because Sam doesn’t get his reference.

“Robin Williams?” Dean asks with a side order of incredulous. “What dreams may come? The hot chick that banged Wesley in Jungle Fever, no? Christ, what were you doing ages five through eighteen?”

Sam shrugs and smiles slightly and for the smallest of instants it’s three years ago, five, ten, and he’s just Sam and that’s Dean his big brother and best friend.

And for the tiniest of miniscule fragmentations of time, Sam knows nothing that came after even matters anymore. They’re the Winchester brothers, they can do anything. Dean feels it too. Must. 

 “Come back with me, Dean. We’ll figure this out together.”

And for the littlest of microscopic iotas of _present_ Sam knows it’s true, and Dean knows it’s true, and fuck the devil they’re making it out of this alive, they’re making it out of this _whole_.

“If you break into Kumbayah, Sam, I swear to God, I’m throwin’ punches,” Dean says.

But nothing’s ever that simple, and God, wherever however and whatever else that entity is, does not play by rules Sam can understand. For Life, capital “L,” can’t be about a series of random mistakes and thwarted catastrophes designed to fuck with his mind. It can’t be limited to ancient prophesies and fate twisting together to turn his existence into a horror show. It can’t.

Except when it is.

Dean’s eyes roll up into his head and he drops like a stone. Worse. He drops like dead-weight.

***+++***

His eyes flutter open and his world is white with pain. Dean’s woken enough times with half of his insides on the outside that he’s already pushing through and calculating the damage. His left arm’s numb but that feels like more to do with how he’s laying than a spinal injury.

He’s obviously in a hospital, nowhere else does that particular blinding brand of bright white and antiseptic quite like the emergency room. And that stench, a truckload of Clorox heavy-duty strength couldn’t cut that stench. It freakin’ smells of old blood and death. He’s hooked up to a machine, something’s in his nose, something’s down his throat. An I.V. is shoved in his vein, everything throbs and burns. He doesn’t see Sam anywhere. What the fuck happened? If he tumbled over the edge of the Grand Canyon he hopes it killed him because Sam is damn sure never letting him live it down.

A moment later he takes back that thought when Dad appears above him, gristled, graying, and very much real. Fuck. He did die. Again. Fuck never living it down, he’d like to be alive to try, please and thank you.

Dad’s talking but he loses the first couple of seconds to the white noise buzzing in his ears. If this is heaven it must be a memory that was repressed, or a wish all twisted. A memory of a wish, maybe that time with the water meets electric taser induced premature heart-attack. And they always said the cheeseburgers were what was going to do him in.

 “Your name is Dean Winchester,” Dad says. ”You’re in the hospital, you can’t talk because there’s a tube down your throat helping you breathe and just as soon as Nurse Ratchet decides to grace us with her estimable presence, I’m going to get those sons of bitches to remove it. You have a sprained wrist, two cracked ribs, a collapsed lung, a concussion, and bilateral lacerations along your abdomen, but considering three days ago we weren’t sure if you’d even wake up, I’d say you blinking at me at all is a sign of improvement .”

Dean’s mind stutters on ‘three days’ after the list of injures and he’s caught in a loop of 'What The Fuck?' If this is something that's happened before...how long was he in here last time when he’d nearly become extra crispy white meat with a side of Dean soup? Enough time for Dad to have snuck by Sam and had this conversation? And how’d he pick up all those extra injuries? When?

Is this mind screwery? Because clearly he’s remembering this memory wrong (and really, say that five times fast). Or is it something else that never happened at all?

Sometimes…more and more often lately those extra forty years in hell really screwed with the flow of the rest of his life and keeping all the memories straight.  Because it has to be something like that, memory or something. Sure as hell doesn’t feel all warm and fuzzy like that time with the Djinn.

“That’s what happens when you tangle with a water sprite without backup,” Dad continues while Dean has a miniature silent panic-attack, “and don’t think a near-death experience is gonna save you from the reaming you’re getting for that fool stunt. But we’ll get to that. Your old man has learned to prioritize in the last few days. 

 “You’re my son, you are strong, you’re getting out of here on your own two feet; any son of a bitch that says otherwise has got a fight on their hands, and for insurance purposes you’re Lukas Nelson.  

“Any of this ringing bells? They said you might wake confused, if at all.”

Confused. That’s all kinds of understatement right there. He’d laugh but there’s a tube down his throat.

Dad takes his discomfort for discomfort and nods. “Yeah, I know, kiddo. We’ll talk about it at home. Rest up, there’ll be time enough for that later.

“Oh, and Dean? Don’t worry about your brother, he’s fine.”

The last utterance more than anything else is what convinces Dean he’s staring at his father and not some supernatural douche-bag’s idea of a practical joke. Dad never quite got just how much Sammy meant. He knew Dean would want to know where his brother was upon waking to an empty and silent Sammy-free world, but he didn’t get he’d want to know it _first_. That a collapsed lung and tubes down his throat had shit-all over Sam’s well-being.

It’s not an attractive quality on Dad’s part, this lack of understanding after thirty freakin’ years, it’s not something he would emulate in a hallucination. Not subconsciously not superconsciously not in a repressed wish of a fake memory. Not in a house, not with a mouse. Not here or there, not anywhere.

And after further thought, this damn sure wasn’t a real memory. Dean’s not even sure if water sprites even exist.

So. The question is …what brand of rabbit hole has he fallen down this time, and where the fuck is Alice when you need her?

Dad pats his shoulder on the way out, solid and real.

His Dad. Old spice aftershave and all.

After that there’s nothing else to do but wait patiently until a nurse arrives. He could do it himself but prior experience taught ripping a breathing tube out one’s throat was a bitch to do alone and not an experience that warrants repeating. See? He can learn.  

***++***

The problem really isn’t his ability to learn, really, Dean decides two hours later, but more of one regarding his willingness to remain patient. Or lack of willingness. Life was short, for some shorter than others, and he simply didn’t have time to wait around all ventilated and tubed up until someone decided to de-robot him. Things to do, people to see, Angels to kill. 

Because who else could be responsible for such epic fail? His father returned from the dead despite the fact Dean and Sam had burned his body themselves, salted and lit it up to avoid just such a scenario as this. And then his spirit released from hell and dissipated into the great unknown, which was now a little better known since the Angel brigade had beamed them up then shot them back down a few months ago. So there was no possible way _this_ Dad was his dad through reincarnation or reanimation. Maybe time-travel? Though he hadn’t gotten that same feeling of …blockage that Cas instilled in him after the last time they’d done the time machine thingy. And Dad didn’t exactly look younger here, in fact, if Dean was the type to project and ponder the future, he’d even say Dad looked exactly like he would be expected to look had he continued to age in the manner and rate he was aging prior to his deal with the yellow-eyed-son-of-a-witches-left-testicle.

So. No time travel. No reincarnation. It had to be wish fulfillment in some way. Though Dean hadn’t made any wishes lately. Lots of desperate kinda-prayers, lots of internal begging, and he wasn’t too proud to admit he’d even done his share of manly sobbing… but again, no wishes lately.

So the angels had to be responsible. This had to be another trick to get him to agree to casting as the royal sword of his royal stick-up-the-asshole-ness. Angels, the only beings who won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer without having to twist the knife just that much further into your gut just because they can. Almost makes him miss those times when the biggest bad out there were Demons, at least their evil was straight-forward.

He’s thinking all these thoughts with half of himself and wondering how bruising in your torso can cause your legs to limp with the other half and before he realizes he’s reached what is apparently his humble abode, according to the insurance information he snuck a peak at while Nurse Wendy tittered away with his meds (he almost felt bad, she was pretty hot for a third-shifter and she was definitely going to catch some shit for letting a patient escape).

He wasn’t sure if the info was even accurate, wasn’t like Dad wasn’t known for providing fake addresses to go along with fake names, who knew maybe fake Dad kept up the same habits. Hell, he still didn’t know ‘cause the house is a total surprise. It’s … _normal_ for one. A light blue with off-white shutters that look like they’ve actually been washed sometime this century, and curtains on the perfectly normal looking front windows. There’s a porch with a bench swing, a yard with a freakin’ rosebush in full bloom (with pink and yellow roses) and the back is encircled with a wrought iron fence, the kind of which that is old and rusty with character and not all pretentious and “ooh look at me, I was more money to install than the rest of the _houses_ on the block.”

A basketball hoop stands sentinel in the driveway, looking down on Dad’s truck and ...

Dean blinks hard a couple of times, then shakes his head swiftly right to left despite the sharp stab of pain in his temple.

His baby sits quietly next to Dad’s vehicle, all newly polished and glistening in the mid-day sun. Well at least this hallucination was nice to his car.

But anyway from hospital to a borrowed vehicle to a bumpy injury jarring ride on public transit and here he was.

Might as well at least knock.

Dad answers just after a shave but before the haircut.

“Dean,” he says, unsurprised. “Was one day really too much to ask?”

Fake Dad with Real Dad written everywhere; Dean is used to supernatural bitches playing with his head, it shouldn’t hurt this much.

“You know me,” he answers wryly. There’s a whole swamp of frogs caught in his throat, it’s the first he’s used his voice since the de-tubing and it sounds all scratchy and guttural. That’s nothing next to the burn that swallows him roof of his mouth to the pit of his stomach with that one sentence.

Dad sighs world-heavy, the sigh he was used to hearing growing up that meant Dad was trying really hard to remember that old idiom of ‘boys will be boys’ but was just about already at the end of his patience.

As much as Sammy wanted his normal, Dean always knew Dad was a parent first with that one sigh.

Speaking of Sammy. Swallowing hard, Dean leans a shoulder against the off-white railings to the little blue house and shoves words past the burn in his entire body.

“Where’s Sam? You said he was okay.”

Dad stiffens, from parent to hunter in under three, Dean recognizes that too but is too busy choking on his own tongue to care, fake Dad’s forearm caught under his throat while his body presses Dean against the perfectly ordinary and innocent off-white trim of the banister. His shoulder-blade grinds into the wood and every old hurt flares new. Guess that wasn’t a happy answer question then.

“I said Adam was fine,” Dad growls. “Your brother Adam.”  The arm squeezes down while the other hand holds on tight and yanks up so that effectively Dean’s dangling by the throat, which is of course when Dad decides to  add conversationally, “I’ve already checked you over with every test known to hunter while you were unconscious. You passed the Devil’s trap at the front door and are too beat-up to be a skin-walker in disguise. As far as I can tell, you are my boy, a little bruised but otherwise un-tampered with. Which is the only reason your head is still attached to your shoulders right now. So tell me who the fuck are you and why did you think I was talking about Sam?”

“I’m your son, just like you said.” It’s hard to get it out past a swollen throat and clenched jaw, and the lack of oxygen might be making him a little light-headed too, but such are the sacrifices one makes when one’s fake father is one wrong sentence away from de-ventilating your life-force.  

“My son wouldn’t have asked me about the whereabouts of a boy that’s been dead ten years.”

Possibly it’s the lack of cell-feeding air but Dean takes the news of Sam’s preternatural death rather well. He only wonders vaguely and briefly why Sam was always either a douche, unrelated, or terminally dead in all his happily-ever-after scenarios. Was that really the only other option, here Dean have your family back, have peace and safety and 24 hours without threat of death by beheading (although technically that last one was fucked to hell, by Dad no less) but oops caveat you can’t take your brother. Christ.

Fuck those Angels.

With a hammer.

***+++***

Sometime later, he doesn’t know when, he wakes again. He’s a little more sore, a little more pissed off, and a little more surrounded by inanely normal. Never mind, strike that last part. He’s laying down on someone’s couch, a gigantic checkered monstrosity that only something evil would buy.

On the walls are a series of family pictures Dean doesn’t remember taking which is only weird because he’s in half of them. They’re all chronological and shit, from Dean’s young and way too pretty adolescence on back to his tow-headed toddler hood. There he is in cap and gown graduating high-school like he never had time nor interest enough to do in his actual life. And there again wearing a little-league uniform, blond hair flying away in the wind, still young enough and constantly in the sun enough that his hair hadn’t darkened to the dirty blond/light brown it is now. Dean never played baseball in his life but he bets he rocked at it. And that one over there he’s gotta be no more than fifteen just adjusting into his new height. When Sammy was fifteen he was a little shrimp and Dean remembers envying how Dad was always a little extra careful with him, treating him like a kid and not the man he was the cusp of becoming while Dean had been expected to solider up at half that age. Apparently it was around the same time Sammy was envying how Dad loved Dean the best. Hindsight is such a brutal little bitch.

Dean sits up slowly, every muscle in his body protesting as his eyes scan the frames and get caught on one with a sulking preteen Dean slumped against the Impala, his Dad on one side, an arm cuffed over the back of his neck almost as if _that_ is the only thing keeping him in the picture, and on the other side a woman and a really young boy are grinning from ear to ear. He’s only met them once before in his life but he knows who they are. Although, second thought, that’s not entirely accurate since they were ghouls the last time - so technically they've never actually met. 

They look a little too ecstatic to be ghouls in the picture. Or at least they’re too ecstatic to be ghouls not happily carving up some poor unsuspecting sap’s poor unsuspecting body, which leads him to believe they’re the real thing at least when that picture was taken.

“That’s Adam, your brother, though from your expression I’m guessing you already know that.”

Dean’s not really surprised fake Dad is in the room with him. He’s a little pissed that he hadn’t noticed him sooner. But it’s been a long year, and Dad was always the only one that could catch him unaware.

“Yeah, we’ve…met,” Dean mumbles in reply without turning around. “In an undead manner of speaking.”

“You checked out for ghoul and polyjuice too,” Dad continues blithely, tone just this shade of nonchalant hiding fantastically intrigued, “so I guess the only other question I have is the same one I asked before you passed out.”

Dean appreciates his fake father’s restraint; it’s not really fair to call it fainting if you’re being choked at the time of the faint. Also, polyjuice? What the fuck? What is with this world, the regular logic-defying supernatural nasties they had to deal with isn’t enough? It’s gotta make up new ones?

Dad’s staring at him like he’s an interesting, possibly fatally venomous, dung-beetle and he can’t decide whether to squash him or get out the tweezers and formaldehyde.

“I’m your son,” Dean reiterates firmly because neither of those choices spell out Happy Times. “Just possibly your son from a world not screwed with by a Djinn, Angel or pagan God.” Dean thinks for a minute as his fake father ponders those words, then adds, “or possibly trickster. Haven’t decided which yet.”

“Okay.”

For this Dean spins around. Well, okay, slow motion stumble turn. Fuck, his _earlobes_ hurt. “Okay? Really, just like that?”

“We’ve seen some weird shit in our lives. I won’t rule out alternate universe due to a malicious,” here he raises an eyebrow questioningly and waits for Dean’s shrug, “possibly malicious paranormal being’s interference.”

“Well that was easy.”

“I’ve already done all the other tests I know to exist. If you are trying to lead me into a false sense of security you’ll be waiting a long time. Also, it possibly wasn’t the best line of defense getting yourself battered, so if this is a trick you’re clearly not a very bright paranormal being; I think I’ll be okay.”

Was that a joke? Did Dad just make a joke? So not cool.

“Yeah, well, would’ve preferred to have skipped the hardcore hello into this new world myself, thanks.”

“Does make me wonder though.”

“Oh?”

“Where exactly _is_ my son.” 

And isn’t that the crown prince of questions. If Dean is stuck here in this fake world with fake Dad and fake surprise brother and fake pseudo-step-mom…does that mean fake Dean is out there with Sammy?  


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> www.amazon.com/author/simone - you know you're curious. ;)

Sam drops to his knees as Dean drops as if they’re tied together, puppet and puppet master. Like that time in second grade for sports day when Dean went through the trouble of dragging him into the three-legged race after Dad’s hunt carried them back too late and everyone had already paired up – then got them disqualified anyway when he ended up carrying Sam over the finish line because eleven and seven was still too big of an age gap.  He feels like that now. Weightless yet still too heavy; immobile, only capable of movement through Dean’s efforts. Lost.

Truthfully he’s felt like that for about a year now, ever since Dean went to hell for him.

The sun is setting in a bruise of orange and reds and the great cavern of the Grand Canyon yawns emptily. Sam calls for Castiel and his voice echoes hollow, lost in the abyss.

He’s afraid to check if Dean’s still breathing. They already know it’s impossible to die; not until they’ve outlived their usefulness anyway.  Still, his hands tremble and he can’t do anything but yell until Castiel’s hand covers his mouth silencing what he suspects was quickly turning into hysterical screams. The angel is brisk and efficient, a shock of cold water in the desert and he quiets immediately.

Castiel leans over Dean’s motionless body.

It remains motionless.

And he thinks _please, no more._

It’s been a long time since Sam has wished for a happily ever after, most days he just prays for “The End.”

***+++***

Fake-Dad looks at Dean, Dean looks at Fake-Dad. They’re at an impasse and Dean’s hesitant to break it because the bug-under-glass look has disappeared some and Dean is in no hurry to bring it back. He’s had enough of passing out for one afternoon thankssomuch.

Finally Fake-Dad clears his throat gruffly and shoves a hand through his hair the way Sammy does when he’s aggravated, and Dad used to before he went…dead.

“I guess outside of that, the only other question that needs answering is how to get you back.”

“It’d help if I knew for sure where exactly _here_ is.”

Fake-Dad looks him over one more long excruciating moment, so long in fact that Dean’s about to make an inappropriate joke about being the other white meat and how incest is a sin even in alternate universes which would be all sorts of awkward and thigh-highs on a guy level wrong that he’s actually kinda glad fake-Dad interrupts his train of thought first.

“Then let’s start there. I’ll explain to you the details of this world, you tell me your side of it, and we’ll figure out where the two split. At least we’ll know if this is an alternate plane or something else entirely.” Fake-Dad gestures back to the couch and takes a seat himself.

Dean thinks about it, fake-Dad rubs the bridge of his nose and then there’s the hand gesture again, quick aggravated swipes through the front of his hair. What the hell. Might as well follow this thing through, isn’t like he has very many other options. Dean sits.

***+++***

 “I don’t understand. If it’s not Zachariah or some other demon, why won’t he wake up?”

Sam pushes his hair out of his eyes and bites down on the growl of frustration that threatens to rise. Bobby watches him pace up and down the tight confines of the room while distractedly adjusting the bill of his baseball cap, on the couch between them Dean lays motionless. If it wasn’t for the faintest of stirrings as his lungs inhale and exhale, he might as well be dead. Castiel hovers stiffly beside him, as somber as always but with his brows drawn just that slightest bit down that gives away his worry. He says nothing about Sam lumping the Angels and the Demons together in one group.

It’s been four hours. Castiel has beamed them both back to Bobby’s place like they’d initially planned only Dean wasn’t conscious enough to bitch about his least favorite way to travel next to flying.

God. Sam would give his right lung to hear Dean bitching right now.

“There must be something you can do.”

Castiel shakes his head grimly. “As far as I can tell he is in a natural sleep. There’s nothing abnormal that has caused his current state.”

“There’s no way that’s a natural sleep, Cas! For one, he dropped like someone had cut his strings, no warning, nothing. And now look at him, no-one sleeps that deep, coma patients don’t sleep that deep!”

Hysteria is building again. He can’t do this alone. He doesn’t want to.

Bobby makes short work of the space between them and grasps him by the shoulders. He grips Sam tightly and gives a little shake, it’s the most physical contact they’ve had since the second time Bobby’d locked him in the panic room. This is the longest they’ve been together without Dean’s mediating influence.  He tenses instinctively, jaw snapping shut. “Sam! Settle down and let the man think.”

Sam huffs but acquiesces and Bobby’s arms drop back to his sides. By mutual unspoken agreement they retreat to opposite ends of the room in silence.

“You misunderstand me. The sleep he is in has not been unduly directed by an outside force, however the fact he is unable to regain consciousness is clearly a sign of influence of an unnatural origin. Nothing paranormal has brought him here, but yes, there is something keeping him in this state,” Castiel corrects gravely.

His frown grows deeper. “There is something there,” he repeats low.

Sam isn’t reassured by the grim look on his face.

***+++***

So apparently this world is like the last world in that Dean and Sam were destined to gank each other, there’s a prophecy and everything, only this time both Mom and Dad are around long enough to find out and have it really negatively affect the harmonious flow of their marriage. As in there is no marriage anymore. Funny how a little inter-sibling fratricide, a couple of demons, a few my good-cheer has permanently been shoved up my ass never to see the light of day angels of the lord, and a prophecy of an oncoming Armageddon can do that to people.

Understandable even.

Dragging Sammy half-way across the world away from the rest of his family and trying to pretend the other half just didn’t exist anymore, like a bad dream? That he doesn’t get. Mom’s theory is that if they weren’t raised as brothers then they just won’t be brothers, per ‘fuck you destiny, no one gives a damn if Cain kills Random Joe.’

Yeah. That postpartum must’ve looked like one fugly son of a bitch on Mom.

“And you actually believed that---“ Dean cuts himself off at the warning glare fake-Dad’s leveling at his head, and modifies reluctantly “—entirely plausible if still highly improbable” _pile of batshit, coo-coo for coco pops, looney tunes, half-priced after-christmas fruit-cake_ , “explanation?”

There’s a glass of water by Dean’s elbow for the Vicodin from fake-Dad’s first aid kit. It’s gone lukewarm in the twenty minutes they’ve been sitting here reviewing fake-Dad’s version of things. He increasingly refers to the man with Dad’s aftershave, and Dad’s mannerisms, and Dad’s voice, as fake-Dad because the longer he hears the dopple-ganger’s version of Dean’s history…the more douchey the man sounds. This isn’t an alternate universe, this is Zachariah’s own brand of an afterschool special. Even with the Djiin, Dean’s family weren’t quite such assholes. Sam eventually listened to reason.

“Of course not,” Fake-Dad replies instantly, like this particular line of thought is one he’s thought and re-thought himself incessantly. “Not at first. I was a civilian then. But what did it matter what I believed, your Mom and I weren’t…in love any longer but she wasn’t dangerous to either you or Sam, what was I supposed to do when she said we had to split up for the sake of our children? Have her committed?”

Fake-Dad’s frustration has found an outlet in his jittering leg and clenched jaw. Dean knows it means he’s at the end of his rope and would really like to shoot something now, Dean has no intention of being the thing Fake-Dad decides to fill with salt, silver, or everyday lead. Dad wasn’t ever very good with inaction; Dean admits freely that he and Dad had more in common with Albino Asian elephants than each other, whatever Sam thinks. But their lack of patience? The way waiting around twiddling their thumbs killed a little more of their soul than a demon ever could? They share that, if nothing else that’s how he knows he’s Dad’s son. He’s never voiced it, but most of him has always known that Dad hunted so he wouldn’t drink, wouldn’t think, wouldn’t go insane with all the waiting. Dean does it because it’s everything he is; saving people like his mom never was…it’s in his blood.

“So you two split, Mom takes Sammy, you get me, and that was okay?”

“She said Sam needed his mom, he was the youngest, I couldn’t do for him what a mother would.” Dad swallows hard. “Sam and I never saw eye to eye to eye anyway,” he trails off a little and Dean hopes, but fears not, that it’s because he’s realized the ridiculousness of saying you didn’t _get along_ with your six and a half year old. “He blamed me for the divorce, it was practical.”

“Practical,” Dean repeats incredulously. His whole life Dad’s always said “family first.” They’ve sacrificed everything they were and everything they could be for _family first_. And now Dad’s telling him, okay sure but only under certain circumstances. Only when it’s freakin’ practical.

It’s clear that talking about it is hurting him, but Dean can’t stop picking at the wound, pressing at the scab and waiting for the “ouch” waiting for it to bleed waiting for it to make _sense_.

“And then you just stopped seeing Sammy because Mom said it was too ‘traumatizing’ when you’d leave again. Besides he was just a little kid anyway, he barely knew who you were. Which is why it took you four months, four freakin’ months before you realized they’d died in a car-accident.”

Fake-Dad’s silence is all the confirmation he needs.  

“Okay. What the fuck, man?” He tries to contain it, tries to hold on to his calm. Really. He can do it. It’s not like this world is even real, so what if fake-Dad is a gigantic douchebag. He can be totally zen about this. If he can be zen about being the one true vessel for an archangel and signing his soul over to their use as a heavenly weapon against Satan himself, no hyperbole…then he can be zen about this.

“No, seriously! What the fuck?!” Dean explodes. He’s just glad it’s only out of the chair and not in a literal sense. The vein in his temple is throbbing.

Somewhere in the world little baby Jesus freakin’ wept.

“I’ve made some mistakes, Dean, I’m not denying that.”

“And I thought I’d heard understatements before,” Dean mumbles.

Fuck not sitting on the couch with the asshole, Dean is honestly not sure if he can stay in the same room as him. Real-Dad had his faults, yeah, but he never once abandoned his family. He left on a semi-regular basis for periods of time that couldn’t exactly be called temporary given towards the end Dean was pulling double duty as brother and father to a sullen, steadily embittered and bitchy teenage Sam…and no one sane could ever say Dad was the paragon of emotional health or an example of what non-obsessive and successful navigation through the grieving process looks like. And, yes, he did occasionally -- more often than he should have – function on what Sam liked to call Miller time, but Dean likes to think that if one of them died it wouldn’t have taken Dad _four months_ to figure that shit out.

“I take it in your universe your mom and I stayed together?” The words sound thrust out of his throat against their will, like even they didn’t want to expose themselves but they had no choice.

Dean ignores the bid for more information. Fake-Dad doesn’t deserve information.

“What happened after that? You clearly became a hunter somehow, if it wasn’t because you believed Mom’s prophecy then what was it?”

Fake-Dad opens his mouth, probably to be uncooperative judging by the scowl twisting his lips, but he’s interrupted from behind.

“My mom was kidnapped by a ghoul and grandpa was the only one who could get her back.”

Dean is getting sick and tired of people sneaking up on him. This world is screwing with his ninja skills. Dean plops himself down into the leather armchair across the room from Fake-Dad with a _whumf_.

In the doorway, Adam Milligan stands looking young and lost. But most importantly: alive. Although, he guesses, in this universe Adam Milligan’s name might really be Adam Winchester.

Behind him, Lisa’s got her arms folded under her bosom, her beautiful dark eyes reflecting a cross between worry and confusion. From her left Ben asks, “What’s going on, Dad?”

And he’s looking at Dean.

Painkillers or no, Dean is clearly going to need something stronger than water before he finishes this conversation.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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“Something like what?” This is the fifth time Sam has asked that question with still no reply. Ever since the whole Lilith thing…and okay, the Ruby thing…and the demon blood addiction thing, they’ve been leaving Sam out more and more when it comes to pivotal parts of the planning. Or research such as the case may be. Sam can do something, he can help, he’s spent practically his whole life researching one supernatural creature or another, he’s damn good at it. But Bobby and Castiel are completely ignoring all his input and flurrying around him like he’s a 6’4 220 lb invisible man.

“For fuck’s sake, he’s my brother! Something like what?” Castiel looks up briefly from where he’s been examining Dean -- lifting his eyelids, listening to his heartbeat, waving a hand in front of his face slowly palm thrust out – before returning to what he’s been doing, silently. Bobby gives a little grunt but otherwise his nose stays planted in the massive tomb before him – he hasn’t turned the page in ten minutes.

Sam sits across from them, fingers steadily clenching tighter on the arm-rest of Bobby’s old lay-z-boy until he’s white knuckled. This isn’t his fault, it can’t be.

Outside the general reasons why it’s all his fault. If he’d only been stronger, less pig-headed, more communicative. If only he’d accepted the truth from the beginning and listened to Dean, if only he hadn’t been so caught up on revenge.

Or even, while we’re there, if only he hadn’t been so fucking naïve and started all this bullshit all those years ago when he’d turned his back on Jake and gotten a knife through the ribs for his trouble. But then if we’re going there, if only Dean hadn’t gone against everything they’d ever believed in and sold his soul to bring him back.

So yeah, this isn’t his fault. But he’s going to go out of his skin if they don’t let him help fix it, because it feels like his fault. It feels like he’s failed Dean again, it feels like the only family he has left is slipping through his fingers and he can do shit all to stop it.

It’s thoughts like those that got him to the point of drinking demon blood in the first place; it’s been there in the back of his mind ever since – nagging at him, pulling at him, telling him it could all be better if only he’d just –

Sam is about to self-combust, he feels it building and he doesn’t have a back-up doesn’t know what to do.

He feels Castiel’s voice run through him like a benediction.

“In some stories the sandman is a Creature of Dreams; he can do anything from give a dream that is wanted to giving the power over dreams or a glimpse of the future. Each family has their own Sandman, they are assigned one that follows down through paternal lineage, and they are the source of much of the rumors regarding guardian angels though their method of guarding is less invasive than what typically comes to mind. It makes sense that it would take a special sort to monitor the needs of the vessels of Lucifer and Michael; one with more power than the norm.”

Sam sits up straight and watches his brother anew. “And that’s what has Dean?”

Castiel never exactly looks shifty but his evasive is certainly a lot more conservative of facial muscles than his normal look, which is saying a lot as his typical expression tends to err on the side of blank, and that’s what he looks now.

“That’s what we believe is causing this state, yes.”

And then there’s silence. Complete, unnerving, unending silence.  Until Sam can’t take it anymore.

“How are we coming to this conclusion,” if Sam’s voice is a little snappy he can’t be blamed.

 Castiel is silent still for a very long moment. Bobby hasn’t looked up once, so Sam can’t say that he’s all of a sudden _now_ decided to avoid his gaze, but his focus somehow gains intensity as if all the rest of his senses have not only joined in on ignoring Sam’s presence but have dedicated themselves to the cause.

 “There is no sign of anything else,” Castiel finally says.  

Over the years Sam has had to share a lot of bad news. He knows talking around a subject when he hears it.

“Great.”

“No sulfur deposits, no foreign presence, no agonized dreams. There’s nothing. He’s at peace.”

Sam looks at his brother and can’t disagree. The lines on his face which have ground themselves in over the past few months of horror have smoothed out, he’s at peace, he’s at rest.

There’s something so final, so awful about it.

Castiel hunches over on himself suddenly, both hands grabbing at his head, holding on to it like he needs to hold it in.

“What? What’s wrong?!”

“Something’s happening,” Cas grunts out.

“With Dean? Is Something happening with--”

Sam cuts himself off because what’s the use in talking to thin air? Castiel is gone. Just Sam and Bobby.  And Motionless Dean peacefully not-sleeping on Bobby’s worn couch.

“I guess we take that as a no,” Bobby mumbles to himself. Then he’s gone too, plodding off to the kitchen without a second glance at Sam.

***+++***

Ben is his. Lisa isn’t, not here in this universe. He’s not surprised. Of the two, he wouldn’tve bet on Lisa despite what he would’ve said at fifteen, twenty, twenty-nine. Even though Dean Winchester, a father? Really?

Still, totally would’ve figured on a kid before a wife. ..or girlfriend…or steady fuck. She’s still gorgeous, bright, and sweet, and all nurturing, and a more fantastic set of natural tits the world has never seen but…

No.  Lisa represents all those wonderful unattainables for him, like stability and safety and normalcy. He looks at her and sees a home, family, love like he hasn’t known since he was four years old. Someone to touch your forehead with the back of a hand to check for fever, wipe away tears from a night terror, to wake up to every  morning and go to sleep with every night.

And that’s not in the cards for him. So no, he’s not surprised.

Ben though, wow, he’s been a Dad for six hours and twenty minutes  and six hours and 19 of those minutes have been the most awesome hours and minutes he’s ever had in his life, bar none. After the sixty seconds of mind-numbing silent internal freak-out.

“Are you sure you’re alright,” Lisa asks again for the fifty millionth time in the last three seconds. Her arms are folded under her bosom and that little worry line hasn’t left her brow. It’s cute.

She doesn’t know he’s not her Dean. Well, even her Dean’s not her Dean.

 “I’m fine.” She arches a brow in disbelief. “I’ll be fine,” he amends.

Despite how uncomfortable it makes him feel (a celibate monk in a brothel uncomfortable) to agree with anything fake-Dad has to say, both of them agree that it’s better if they’re the only two to know that the Dean currently occupying fake-Dad’s hideous tricolored sofa isn’t the same Dean they’ve always known. Instead somehow they’ve convinced a roomful of otherwise intelligent people that Dean’s last hunt left him with a mild case of amnesia along with the bruises, bumps, and broken bones.  Yeah, go figure.

Ben is subtly bouncing on his toes; just that little bit that it’s clear he can’t curtail his excitement another moment. “So we’re still going to the track, right?”

The track, heh. He’s such a cool Dad.

“If your Dad says it’s okay.” Lisa answers wearily, she unfolds her arms long enough to attempt a ruffle of his hair, Ben dances just out of reach.

“It’s okay, I said we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it,” Dean says, he mirrors Lisa’s firm stance, going for parental confidence…but really he’s protecting his ribs.  

Ben pumps his fist in the air and tears off, yelling behind him, “I’m gonna get my stuff from the car!”

When he disappears around the corner, Lisa asks again. “Are you absolutely sure, Dean? To be honest you look like warmed over walking roadkill. If it’s too much this weekend, he’s not going to hate you. He’ll understand.”

“He’s eleven years old, ‘course he won’t understand.”

“He’s your son; he’ll forgive you.”

His son. It doesn’t stop sounding perfect.

“He’s my son; I’m not going to volunteer to give him a reason to have to.”

Lisa smiles that gentle smile of hers, shaking her head slightly. He hasn’t known her long, a weekend here and there an average of once every couple of years, but he can feel her pride…for him, of him.   

And it’s…nice. Nice and easy and everything he’s always wanted in ways he’d never ask for. It feels like the Djinn all over again. Only, before the visual hallucinations of all the victims of supernatural phenomena they hadn’t saved. And before he’d realized he was tripping out on nasty Djinn LSD while his real body was withering away in an abandoned factory suspended from a hook in a dripping ceiling. And before he’d realized Sam was a douche. Although lately Sam’s been kind of douche-like in regular reality so nothing new there. Anyway, it’s nice. He loses himself in it a little.

He takes his son to his first professional car race, lets him pretend to be Mario Andretti on the way, forgets fake-Dad and his abandonment, forgets Sammy and Mom are dead, forgets Lucifer and the angel brigade, forgets that he doesn’t belong here. It’s easy.

The really weird shit doesn’t happen until that night.

***+++***

They don’t have to wait all that long (2 beers and a book and a half) before Cas is back. Dirty, stumbling, with an armful of _something_ that hasn’t seen the inside of a bathroom in a very long time. Or soap. Or water. Or fresh air because Christ the _stench_.

“Help,” Castiel grunts when it’s clear neither Sam nor Bobby have any intention of releasing themselves from shock. It jolts them into motion.

Bobby yanks out the pull-away cot, Sam rushes to assist what he now realizes isn’t a bundle full of dirty rags but instead a human body.

“What in the hell?” Bobby asks. Sam doesn’t need to, Cas lays the figure out on the cot none too gently, and now Sam’s got two. What a sad little family, his only living relatives are right here in the same room.

Unconscious.

“That’s Adam,” he says, “our brother.”

Well. At least it’s better than dead.

***+++***

It starts off slow. A flash of memory he shouldn’t have. A little boy, pitch dark hair and green eyes that are closer to Moss than the murky hazel of a Winchester, so despite Sammy’s wacky crazy hairstyle this kid can’t be a relative. He’s in a room that’s close and dark, lit up from the thread of light sneaking in under the door but that’s it. There are spiders in the room too. The little boy knows it even if he can’t see them, but he’s not scared. Sometimes he pretends they’re friends. He’s bored to death. And cramped, and he wishes he could move about without bumping his head or tumbling back into the darkness. He’s not scared; he’s not happy. He wishes he had real parents.

And then the flash is gone and Dean’s touching his temple gently -- waiting for a headache that never comes because Whoa what the hell? --and wondering why opening a closet door made him think of that.

It happens again, another memory that’s clearly a memory even if it’s just as clearly not a memory of _Dean’s own_. An older boy is chanting something he can’t make out, the sneer on his face making it clear it’s not something he wants to hear unless he’s in punching distance, and Dean is flooded with such an overwhelming ocean of fear and anger that he can’t decide what to do, run or fight. Then it’s gone. Again. Just like the last.

And fake-Dad is back to staring at him like he’s a taxidermist and Dean’s a small woodland creature. “Something wrong?”

Dean bites his tongue and shakes his head. “All this reading is making my brain hurt,” he offers. They haven’t gotten anywhere with the research and perhaps it’d be helpful to know that Dean’s getting someone else’s memories in bits and pieces of cinematographic wonder inside his head…and they don’t feel like _Dean_ not even a Dean from a foreign universe. He can’t trust fake-Dad enough to get the words out, he’s still stuck on _fourmonths._ So he’ll either have to ignore it or figure it out himself.

He’s got plenty of opportunities.

It happens again, and it happens again. And again.   

Flash Flash just a few seconds each. Maybe a few minutes if he has them while he’s asleep, they’re not dreams. If nothing else he knows that. They’re real.

Over the course of the next few days they get longer and more frequent. Pretty soon a blade of grass triggers a memory, Ben chanting his times tables, Adam humming under his breath. It’s like…it’s like puberty all over again but with memory instead of erections. The _air_ reminds him of his first Firebolt (what the fuck?) and how his stomach clenched in a nauseating combination of trepidation and excitement because after all Hermione could be right it could be a trap but bloody hell a _Firebolt._  

That one doesn’t even make any sense.

The very first thing Dean’s doing next time he has the chance is shoving an Enochian blade through Zachariah’s throat.

***+++***

_Happiness was something Harry thought of as a physical thing, a material presence that had little to do with wealth or jewels or expensive baubles…but was itself alive and tangible all the same. Happiness was something that would crawl its way up to him after all the suffering and pain and horror of war, something that would knock on his door and wave him hello and welcome him in with no effort on his part. It would just be. And Harry would be._

_This._

_This mess? This was not on. Not in any of the plans._

Dean wakes, a gasp caught in his throat, shoved up against the driver’s window of his baby, Adam leaning in over him from outside.  

“Dude, what was that,” Adam asks. And the tone is wobbly where Dean knows the boy wanted firm, he can tell just exactly how freaked the fuck out he is in one sentence, it’s a tell that’ll get him killed one day if he’s really serious about following in fake-Dad’s footsteps and becoming a hunter. Dean can’t summon up anything other than mild annoyance.

“Just a dream,” he mutters.

Adam looks like he doesn’t believe him. Good for Adam. The kid is all of Dean’s most annoying traits wrapped up in Sam’s overachieving self with a bit of spoiled brat mixed in, and fake-Dad won’t shut the hell up about him.  

Adam goes to Wisconsin University, and Adam wants to be a doctor so when he takes up hunting full time with Dad he’ll be prepared, and Adam doesn’t believe in gray areas, and Adam’s favorite song is white lightning.

Adam is so clearly Dad’s replacement Sam it makes him sick.

Otherwise the kid’s not so bad; he definitely doesn’t want to be having his little emotional meltdowns in front of him though.

“You try waking up with a tube down your throat and half the mobility in your body gone and see if you don’t have a few doozies of nightmares.”

Adam grins. “Doozy? Seriously, dude? What are you eighty?”

Dean scowls, climbing out of the car. “Fuck you, Milligan.”

“That’s Winchester-Milligan to you, pal.”  

***+++***

_He had a brother once. He had a mom, he had a father that was more than the sum of his grief and repressed fears. He had a family. It all changed the night of the fire, though none of them would know it until six years later. Now’s he’s got nothing. Just him all alone again as always. And life is a rhythm he’s forgotten how to play. His metronome lies withered and hollow in an oaken casket, deep in the unsympathetic earth, none the less piteous for being marked. Without him…things keeps slipping. Too fast, too slow, half a beat off._

_Little things at first._

_A sentence left unfinished. A thought broken before it’s begun._

_There’s a pain in his chest that never quite goes._

_It’s sharpest during the quiet times._

_And some days all he can do is mutter quietly to himself, broken sobs lingering on his blood-bitten lips. The muffled embrace of an unquantifiable agony sits there heavy on some part of his anatomy that isn’t quite identifiable by name because he never knew he had it at all until the after. Until the in betweens. And the pain, the anguish sits there on it, folds itself around it squeezing until all he can do is cry big empty tears rolling silently down hot cheeks. Because if he doesn’t, if it doesn’t escape it’ll sit there and squeeze and keep squeezing until his throat stoppers up, and his chest buckles, and he can’t breathe. And he can’t be anything other than a DeanWinchester an unending lump of suffocating pain and hollow I miss you’s and I’m so sorries and God, Sam I’d give anything –--_

_Other days it’s not like that at all. Other days there’s no missed steps, he’s so full of nothingness he wonders if this is what death feels like._

_And is he... Is his brother at peace on the other side?_

_It’s pathetic._

Dean wakes silently, his teeth bearing down around his tongue as some instinct prevents the scream (much manlier than a sob) from making its way out his mouth. Just another nightmare. They get creepier and creepier the longer he stays here. Not that they weren’t creepy to begin with but this rose it to a whole new level of Tales from the Crypt and that was saying something when the life he was used to had _Lucifer_ in it.

He’d dreamt as himself, maybe even the ‘himself’ that truly belongs to this universe, but those emotions weren’t his. Oh, he’d felt them before, he knew what it was to be the last one standing, he knew that emptiness and loss, but he also knew his own feelings and _those_ were not his.

Dean’s covered in sweat and his shirt is stuck to his skin like an uncomfortable Trojan post the happy ending. Dean forces himself to flop back in bed, stretch out and settle his heaving lungs back into a rhythm that pantomimed natural.

Besides, Sammy’s not dead.

 Except that he is. In this world he is.

They’ve come up with nothing. There’s no Bobby in this universe. Or Missouri, or Pam. The Famous Samuel Campbell has been long dead. He’s even tried screaming his lungs out calling Cas. Nothing. Nada. It’s like everyone who might have had an inkling of an idea about what the hell’s going on here has been systematically written out of this world’s cast. If Cas, the real Castiel doesn’t find a way to get him out of this mess, he’s going to lose his mind. He just hopes Sam doesn’t take this as his cue to go on a demon blood bender. It’s funny how just a couple of days ago he hadn’t thought there was much left to lose.

***+++***

_It comes to him, sometimes, in increments; the realization that things are different now, things will always be different. It comes in tiny movements that allude to but never spell out a longer more complex excursion from the realm of ‘what used to be’ to ‘what is’, little sonatinas of 3d epiphanies. Or sometimes it hits him hard, all at once. One lightning blow of ‘wow, nothing will ever be the same again’. Sometimes he imagines he can hear it, can feel it: slow subtle shifts of his life just rearranging itself unobtrusively (and entirely without his consent) until he can’t remember exactly, if at all, what it was like before._

_Before the magic powers, before the Weasleys, before Voldemort, before lies, before diversions, before betrayal and obligation and revenge. Before Teddy…_

_With so many ‘before’s he must have been a different person, because he honestly can’t remember what it was like. Well, no, that’s not it. Strictly literally speaking, he _can_... but he _can’t_. He remembers facts and technicalities of times before, just not the emotional aspects and that makes all the difference. He’s had seventeen years to get used to it, but now that he’s here a slow night at home just isn’t the same without a warm one-year old body curled up in his arms. He can’t remember how he felt before, so it’s just like there wasn’t a before. He can’t remember a time _without_, and he thinks that must be what people mean when they speak of innocence and experience. Loss and whatever the absence of loss is. Is there one? The only vaguely interesting and useful thing he took away from Hermione’s pre-English lit final prattle rumbles around in his head when he tries to think of this; ‘creation is destruction from another point of view’. Then his head starts to tighten like it does right before the onset of a really massive headache and he stops trying to define his life._

_University is…university is just going to be like that. One of those ‘before’s that he won’t be able to remember being without. Though, right now he’d settle for just getting his schedule together. It’s going to get better. Really. Last term sorted itself out alright._

_Harry blinks rapidly to un-stick his eyes from the blurring font in front of him. Intro to Psych at 2:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays ran into Basics of Human Physiology.  He can’t remember how he had narrowed it down to those two selections, nor can he remember why they sounded like good ideas…and frankly, right now, he can’t work himself into giving a damn. “I don’t think I can do this, Hermione,” he moans._

_A tousled head of brunette curls peak over his shoulder, body half reclining in her chair, half in his, seated on the joint arms of both -- forced into it by the pile of books claiming the rest of her chair.  “Sure you can,” Hermione replies, sitting back up to regain her balance, “close your eyes and point. They’re all intro classes, what does it matter?” At Harry’s look of incredulity -- this from the same girl who took three days deciding between world history before the 1500s or after-- she rolls her eyes. “Alright, fine, forget I asked. What’s your advisor say?”_

_Harry returns to the paper in front of him with a snort. An entirely not bitter snort, thank you very much. Just a slightly amused, vaguely disgusted, but totally unbitter snort. “What did his advisor say.” That was a joke. His advisor was a bird-like man with a long thin nose and an eternal flush who’s personality fit with his appearance. Friendly enough but…flighty and distracted, and much too eager to meet the great Harry Potter ‘Here at MY School, will wonders never cease’ to focus on little things like actually being of some use. Harry was lucky if the man arrived for an appointment only three hours late, and then managed to pay attention through the meeting between all the flusters and blusterings to let Harry actually finish a whole sentence. Reminds him a bit of Slughorn really. The first time they met Harry was forced to camp outside of his office while the student assistant shot him withering looks for making her put off her lunch break._

_He’d almost thanked her for not fawning._

_“It can’t be like this every year. Right? I mean it just can’t. I’ve heard first year was really a weeding out process,” Harry says slowly, with something like dawning panic, “sort of like an academic gauntlet to divide us unworthy apathetic shifters from… serious people.”_

_“Harry, the phrase you’re looking for is anal retentive overachiever. Don’t think I don’t know you and Ron used it often enough about me behind my back.”_

_There’s a laugh from behind his shoulder, and a pleasant tenor intones: “A.K.A. Honor’s student.”_

_They both turn as much as their positions allow to be greeted with the sight of a tall brunette in a v-neck dark green jumper. He can feel Hermione pulling back in, shifting closer to Harry._

_“Sorry I couldn’t help overhearing,” the brunette says. “I’m Javiar.”_

_Harry smiles back. “Harry and this is Hermione” And he wonders why introductions are necessary when it’s clear the man has all he needs when his eyes flicker upwards to the little mound of scarred flesh beneath Harry’s fringe._

_Hermione leans over, strategically exposing just a tiny bit of cleavage. Harry’s never loved her more. “And that’s really entirely too many ‘H’s,” she said with an appraising smirk._

_He smiles, eyes still trained on Harry. “Well, mine’s a ‘J’ but yes I see your point.” He slides back to speaking to harry as if he’d never left and Hermione was just a segue into bigger things._

_“What is it that you want to do once you get out of here?”_

_Harry spares a small grin, “Undecided. Capital ‘u’.” Which is the problem, isn’t it?_

_“Okay, close your eyes,” Javiar says. Adds, “trust me,” when Harry makes no move to do so, instead shares a look with Hermione. She shrugs, peering far too interestedly at them both with a little smirk pulling at her lips._

_Harry closes his eyes grudgingly and Javiar scoops up both hands, holds them gently palms down in his own. “Now,” he says, “right this very minute which sounds like more fun, behavior or structure? How someone’s put together or what makes someone tick?”_

_Harry thinks what or why. What something is, or Why someone would do the things they do. And he thinks about Voldemort. And he knows he’s so tired of wondering ‘why.’_

_“Structure,” Harry says. Javiar beams, no other word for it, gigantic smile pulling his cheeks to his ears._

_“See? Wasn’t that easy?” Slides a slip of something into Harry’s hand, “these are my numbers. If you need more help later…with anything, just stop on by or give me a ring.”_

_Javiar holds on a little bit longer than absolutely necessary in Harry’s opinion, and his hand brushes against Harry’s wrist as he releases._

_There’s a strange little expression on Hermione’s face after he leaves -- sort of a combination between a smirk of amusement and a wry grin, the one that causes her brow to crinkle like a vaguely mutated newborn._

_“What?”_

_“I think someone has a bit of a crush, Harry”_

_Both eyebrows rise against his will. “Er… maybe you’re reading a little too much into it, Hermione. I mean, he barely said anything to you.”_

_Hermione rolls her eyes. “I didn’t say he was flirting with me.”_

_“But then…”_

_She shakes her head. “Sometimes I really don’t know how you manage to dress yourself in the morning, Harry Potter. One day someone is going to bottle your form of clue-less-ness and have a biological weapon.” She sighs gustily like her heart’s torn between breaking from frustration and disgust or just pity._

_It’s only later he realizes he hadn’t protested that it was the wrong gender._

 

Cut. End scene. Frame. Dean’s getting so used to this bullshit it’s only a matter of moments for him to shake it off. Felt realer that time, less of a memory more of a live action movie. So after that brief disturbing interlude down the rabbit hole of weird, Dean has managed to confirm a couple of things.  One, the guy he’s having visions about is definitely gay, which, really? Not the most helpful of information. Two, the guy he’s been having visions about is definitely the same person, just at different ages probably. The thoughts have the same feel, the tone is the same, God help him for saying this and may Sammy never find out – the _emotions_ are distinct.

“Have you figured it out? Is it enough?”

The world slows, the air around him thickens, and everything freezes ‘til there’s nothing, not even the chirping of the birds as white noise.

The shotgun Dean’d automatically grabbed, cocked, and pointed, disappears in his hands and he’s leveling air at the creature. Huge eyes, bald head with one of those little floppy nightcaps on its head, wrinkled like a little gray human-shaped prune and no bigger than a tall toddler, the thing hovers in the air a foot away, dust sprinkles from his knapsack shirt-thing as it moves. The creature doesn’t exactly have a mouth so Dean’s not sure where – or what -- its voice is coming out of… Half a split second to take all this in and he’s reaching for his bowie but that’s gone too.

“You’re not Zachariah,” Dean says slowly, carefully.

The creature cocks its head to the side and repeats its question. “Is it enough? Have we done enough?”

Dean is automatically glancing around warily, looking for more of the ugly bastards. “We who? You and the mouse in your pocket?”

That’s ignored too. “We cannot delay you any longer. Your angel friend has found us; they are bringing you back as we speak; we are only as good as long as the dream.”

“I hope he blasts your evil ass.”

“We are not evil. We protect the innocent, give them rest, give them peace. That is not evil.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy, dude. I haven’t been innocent since Stephanie Mitchell gave me her special hugs in junior high.”

The creature makes a high-pitched wheezing noise that Dean, scowling, can only guess means it’s chuckling. “Oh you are the most innocent of the innocents. You are a protector. You are the righteous man. You are good Dean Winchester, and that is why you are Michael’s vessel, not just your bloodline.” It tilts its head further at an angle no human could achieve short of removing the thing, and repeats its question for the third time. “Is it enough? Do you know what you need now?”

Dean opens his mouth to – he doesn’t even know, swear, snap, make a wise crack…when he realizes it is. It is enough.

The not-quite-a-mouth smiles, pride is washing over its words. “His name is--”

“Harry Potter,” they say together. And it’s like the information has always been there, stuck in his brain waiting for him to speak it, waiting for him to be ready.

“He’s a wizard, and an anti-christ,” Dean says soft, “but mostly he’s just another poor sucker dragged into a fight he never had a chance to win. Except he did. Win.” 

“Then it is enough. And now you know the only answer there is, is ‘no.’ There is always another way Dean Winchester, suicide is not an answer. We have been guarding your family since the beginning of time; we cannot let the son fall as the father did.”

“So what do I do? Sit around and wait until Sam folds and Lucifer makes alphabet soup out of the Earth?“

“You hold on, trust what you know, and seek help with those who have beaten the odds before you. His name is Harry Potter, remember it, Dean Winchester.“

The world’s speeding back up around him and fading away at the same time. It’s the oddest thing, he feels himself floating away but his feet are still touching solid ground.

“Hey, just out of curiosity,” he yells because he’s getting further and further away. “What was up with the bruised ribs and the tube down my throat?”

“That was not us. This is your dream and you have directed it in the manner you’re most familiar. You expected broken bones and so you have them, you wanted Ben as your son and so you received that as well. We can only share we cannot create.”

Dean sits with that a moment. “Well,” he says to himself, he’s the only one left. “That says some fucked up things about my Psyche.”  


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops I get caught up in projects and forget to post. Sorry. I've been a busy bee at : amazon.com/author/simone

The first thing Dean sees when he wakes up is his little brother…and then his other little brother. And he thinks _‘Fucking Christ, not again.’_

“Dean! You’re awake!”

Sam’s voice is loud in his ear; it’s a shock to the system after so long without it. Worse than Stanford and their silent cold-war. Welcome though, no matter what, even through those days when he did everything he could to forget Sam even existed…he’s always been welcome.

 “Who—who is –“ Dean breaks off and gestures wildly  to the figure lying in Bobby’s living room that was always used as more of a study, but given what they do that pretty much was the definition of living. Why the hell is he thinking about this right now? He’s not up to figuring out how to escape another dreamscape…a dream---that was epic Alice-in-freakin-wonderland proportion nightmare. What the fuck.

What the--

“Dude! Who the fuck is this?” Dean sits up and gestures wildly at the still form.  

“This is Adam, the real Adam, I mean before the ghoul-suit version we met last year.”

Something shifts from over his left and Dean notices Castiel for the first time. “Cas, what the hell?”

“Angels,” he states. Just that no more. This conservation of communication normally doesn’t get up Dean’s ass but he’s a little sick of fishing for explanations at this point.  

“Of course angels. Because apparently a little thing like resurrection is no problem for angels. Why?”

“Why? Why not,” Sam snorts. “Why the hell do they do anything they do?”

Castiel rises, waves it away. “I know one thing for sure. We need to hide him now.” He turns Adam over on his back and places a hand on his chest. Dean still remembers the excruciating internal fire as the Enochian symbols were burned onto ribcage that first time and winces on Adam’s behalf.

So of course that’s when Adam wakes up.    
  
“Where am I?”  

***++***

They’re waiting for any sign from either one of them, each second that passes hiking Sam’s anxiety up another notch. Then Dean wakes up like it’s the most natural thing in the world and they haven’t been going out of their minds trying to figure out what to do to bring him back, like he’s never left in the first place. And before they get a chance to ask any questions Castiel does his magical wavey thing over Adam’s chest and essentially burns the boy awake. So there’s him to think about now too.

“It's okay. Just relax, you're safe,” Sam finds himself assuring.

True to the Winchester name, Adam pops up and spits out, “who the hell are you?”

Dean’s smiling like some psycho nut-job, fondly. “You're going to find this a little...a lot crazy, but we're actually your brothers.”  
  
Adam just stares at him blankly.

“It's the truth. John Winchester was our father, too. See, I'm Sam—“

“Yeah, and I'm sure that's Dean. I know who you are.”  
  
“How? Did Dad--”

“No,” he cuts off shortly. “The angels warned me about you. Now where the hell is Zachariah?”

Dean snorts, that fond expression still clear and present. “Never thought I’d hear someone actually _ask_ for that walking pile of horse’s ass. Look man, this is getting nowhere fast. How about you start from the beginning, lay it all out.”

Adam shrugs a little and leans back. “Well, I was dead and in Heaven. 'Cept it—it uh, kinda looked like my prom and I was making out with this girl, her name was Kristin McGee—“  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says smarmily, “that sounds like heaven. Did you get to third base?”  
  
It warms his heart just a little that Dean just can’t help himself. “Just keep going, Adam,” Sam interrupts the interruption.  
  
“Well, these…these angels, they popped out of nowhere, and they tell me that I—I'm chosen.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“To save the world.”  
  
“How you gonna do that?”  
  
Adam looks like Dean’s shoved him out of some serious thought. “Oh, me and some archangel are going to kill the devil.”

Well, doesn’t that sound familiar.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean agrees with that tone that means he’s just humoring you. “Which archangel?”

“Michael. I'm his uh, sword or vessel or something, I don't know. “

They look at each other, all four. Huh. All three, Castiel doesn’t look surprised at all. “Well, that makes absolutely no sense,” Dean says.  
  
“Not necessarily,” Cas says.  
  
“How do you mean?”

“Maybe they're moving on from you, Dean. He is John Winchester's bloodline, Sam's brother. It's not perfect, but it's possible. “  
  
“You gotta be kidding me.”  
  
Sam doubles that. After everything they’ve been through, all the ‘no’s and almost ‘yes’s, they were just going to flip the script this late in the game? “Why would they do this?”  
  
“Maybe they're desperate. Maybe they _wrongly_ assumed Dean would be brave enough to withstand them.”

There officially goes all the last vestiges of fond and amused. “Alright, you know what? Blow me, Cas.”

“Look, no way,” Sam interrupts again before Dean and Cas take that places he doesn’t want to think about. “After everything that's happened? All that crap about destiny? Suddenly the angels have a Plan B? Does that smell right to anybody?”

It smells as fresh as demon sulfur is what it smells like.

“You know this has been a _really_ moving family reunion, but uh, I got a thing, so--” Adam tries to slide his way past three grown hunters and a rebel angel and finds himself pressed further back on the cot none-too-gently. Christ this isn’t going the way Sam had hoped.  
  
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no. Sit down. Just listen, okay? Please.”

‘Course Sam had hoped to never have to have this conversation so…whatever.

“The angels are _lying_ to you. They're full of crap.”  
  
“Yeah, I don't think so, they’re _angels_ “ Adam denies. Had Sam ever been that naïve, ‘cause it sort of feels like he lost all his awe within fifteen seconds of meeting those sons of bitches.

“Really. They tell you they were gonna roast half the planet?  
  
“They said the fight might get pretty hairy, but it is the devil, right? So we got to stop him.”  
  
“Yeah, but there's another way. “ And that’s Dean. That’s Dean offering Adam a way out, and Sam can’t trust he’s not talking about throwing himself to the wolves as the solution.

“Great. What is it,” Adam challenges.    
  
“I have some ideas.” Dean’s voice lowers in volume and his head goes down and Sam doesn’t know if he should be thrilled that the ideas are in the multiple or scared that he’s having some because at least one he knows mean’s Michael is going to be lodge up inside there tighter than any Demon could.     
  
“Like?”  
  
And Sam can’t take it anymore, can’t stand to have Dean answer that. “Look, Adam…You don't know me from a hole in the wall, I know. But I'm begging you. Please, just trust me. Give me some time.”  
  
“Give me one good reason.”  
  
“Because we're blood.”  
  
“You've got no right to say that to me.”  
  
“You're still John's boy,” Bobby cuts in. Which could only be topped in ‘five of the worst things to say’ if he’d been talking to a thirteen year old Sam.

***+++***

Dean is the first one to admit thinking about Dad doesn’t fill him with warm fuzzy feelings these days, especially after all that fake-Dad tom-fuckery, he’s not his favorite person. Still…it’s Dad, right? The same guy who for all intents and purposes treated the littlest Winchester like the only normal child he’d had, protected and loved him in a way that was the closest to what a father’s love should be. There’s no reason Adam’s face should cloud up like a storm brewing.

“No, John Winchester was some guy who took me to a baseball game once a year. I don't have a dad. So we may be blood, but we are not family. My mom is my family. And if I do my job, I get to see her again. So no offense, but she's the one I give a rat's ass about, not you.”

Sammy flinches back, clearly hurt but rallying back all the same. “Adam, you may not believe it, but dad was trying to protect you. Keeping you from all of this.”  
  
“Yeah well, I guess the monster that ate me didn't get that memo.”  
  
“You remember that?”  
  
“Oh yeah.”  
  
That sits on Sam hard, he can tell, they were days too late to even hope to stop the carnage at the Milligan household, they hadn’t even known there _was_ a Milligan household, but Sam still counts it as a loss. Dean does too.

“Still,” Sam tries again. Over and over and over, the one thing he can give the kid, he’s persistent as jock itch. “Trust me. The one thing worse than seeing dad once a year was seeing him _all_ year.”  
  
Second worse thing to say to the littlest Winchester tonight. “Do you know how full of crap you are?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Really. You see, it was me and it was my mom. That's it. She worked the graveyard shift at the hospital. I cooked my own dinners. I put myself to bed. So you can say whatever you want about our dad, but the truth is, I would have taken anything.”

Sam literally takes a step backwards, averts his gaze and goes quiet. And Dean is suddenly Not in the Mood for Adam’s bullshit. “You always were a spoiled little bitch.”

Adam’s eyes narrow and his mouth opens and Dean can’t stand to hear his whines one second longer.

 “No, you know what? You’re right. You figure out how to be there for your kid, or you don’t have one. That simple. You know who Sammy had? Me. That’s it. You might have seen Dad longer in that one day than we got in our entire collective lives. And when we did see him, it was all about the hunt, being strong enough, fast enough, tough enough, and never ever fucking up. You think any of that shit matters now that he’s dead? You think the rest of the world is gonna give a fuck that we have Daddy-issues the size of Oklahoma when the Devil blows it the fuck up? We’re adults now, Adam. Boo-fucking-hoo grow the hell up, man.

“Besides, if the angels are that damn great, why didn’t they bring your mom back already? Why the wait? Why is she season five Brenda Walshing all over our fun little family reunion?”

Adam balls his hands into fists like a stubborn little kid whose mommy told him ‘no.’ “I have to do my job first.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Dean says, “I’m done.”

When they wake up in the morning, the doors are shut, the windows are sealed, Sam’s still standing sentry over the back exit...but Adam’s gone.

***+++***

“So Cas figure out where he is yet?”

Sam is having a not so great year and he really wishes the hits would slow for a few seconds, not even stop, just slow.  Dean stretches out on the couch, arms comfortably crossed behind his head, but it’s for show because Sam can see just exactly how tense he is.

“Yeah. They must’ve took him in his sleep, he must’ve told them where he was in a dream. He’s in that room where they took you.”

“The beautiful room?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. So much for, ‘baby, you’re so special.’ I feel used, Sammy.” He grins a little, says, “tell me I had more armed guards at least?”

“Yeah, no. The place is crawling with mooks…Pretty much a no-shot-in-hell, hail-Mary kind of thing. “

“Well don’t that just put a skip in your step. Okay. Fine. We’ve done this before, we’ve done worse, we’ll do it again.”

 He sits up and for a moment Sam is sure he’s going to reach out to him, tug Sam in close like they only do when one or the other is on the brink or just past death’s door. Instead Dean arranges himself carefully on the edge of the couch, hands steepled between his thighs, head down.

“I know we’re not that great with the sharing and caring schtick --” He begins, and Sam restrains himself from casting aspersions on whose fault that is because truthfully when it really counts Sam is piss poor at it too. “—but if we’re going in there we gotta go in there with some understandings. This whole Sandman Dream Demon Whatever the hell, it’s got me a little turned around, dude. I—I think there might be another  way but I’m not sure, it’s a long shot and the longer I’m away from that dream-world the more surreal it seems so I’m not--”

Dean stops, rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly, then through a force of will raises his head to meet Sam’s eyes. They’re honest and open and it’s the first time he’s really really seen his brother in…too long.

“Look, if they took Adam, you know why they did, and I can’t honestly say for certain that if I go in there and I get a chance…I won’t say ‘yes.’”

“But why, Dean? I don’t understand, you of all people should know you can’t trust them.”

“I don’t trust them,” Dean says carefully. “But I don’t trust you either. And I’m tired. I’m tired of fighting who I am, and I’m tired of getting people killed in my place, that kid’s not taking a bullet for me, Sam. I’m just tired. So give me something, anything, please.”  

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve said everything I could think of.”

“Not everything. You never told me why there was nothing of me in your heaven, or why you thought guzzling down demon blood was a better idea than just talking to your brother, or why I should believe Lucifer’s not gonna wear you to the prom with all the angry self-righteousness you’ve got going on over there. I really need to know, Sam. You keep saying let’s just stick together let’s just stick together but the way I see things, Sammy, you wrote me out of the cast list a long damn time ago. ”

And that’s the thing he’d never meant to, he doesn’t know how he can explain it when _he’d never meant to._  

“I don’t know what to say about heaven’s moving pictorama. I don’t know why those memories were chosen…they were good ones for me, sure, but they weren’t the best. Not even close, I’ve had tons better. And most of them are about you. I remember when you told Jimmy Fallon to go suck his mother’s dick when I was ten because he said I was too lame to hang out with you guys and I was a crybaby that was going to drag everyone down, and then you took me to the arcade and we played everything forty bucks could buy.

"And I remember that time you stayed up all night with me to help me with the class speech even though you thought I was a tool for caring so much and had quit school three years before. Or that time you took me to see the Christmas lights at the Rockefeller center. Those memories weren’t there. And it’s not just you, lots of stuff was cut out, there wasn’t a single memory of Jess, or Dad when I was four and five and six and thought he hung the moon. Or Bobby or Pastor Jim or even freakin’ Caleb. I don’t think we were meant to see anything helpful, Dean. I think we were only allowed down the path that would best steer us towards saying ‘yes.’

“As for the rest…I can’t explain the headspace I was in, but I wasn’t at my best. You know that. Somehow relying on Ruby was easier than admitting to you I couldn’t handle jack-shit. Maybe because it was easier to pretend than admit my big brother who’d been newly released from literal Hell had his shit better together than I did. I don’t know, I really wish I did, man.

"You don’t know how much I wish I could go back and change things. But I’m not writing you out, Dean. God, I can’t do this without you. I know that. Yeah I’m angry, but I’m not trying to be self-righteous. All I can do is promise I won’t say it, I won’t say ‘yes’ if you won’t. If you help me believe in myself. ‘Cause you know what? Despite everything? I believe in you and us enough for the both of us.

" We’ll go in there, and we’ll get Adam, and they’ll ask _again_ for you to martyr yourself, and you won’t. When push shoves, you’ll make the right call. Because… despite everything…you’re still my big brother and that’s not gonna change no matter how many times I screw up or you screw up or how much life gets in the way. You’re my big brother and I trust you.”

And then he’s done, he runs out of words, and he has no idea if it’s enough.

Dean nods once, stands, pulls on his leather jacket. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”  It’s enough.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> amillien2one.wordpress.com new works, updates, custom stuff.

As it turns out the beautiful room is in an abandoned muffler factory in Van Nuys, California. Such a freakin’ let down, Angels, Christ. Not to be ironic or anything. 

Castiel goes first and clears the path by banishing himself away along with the rest of the living angel guards. And they have a problem with Dean and martyrdom. Hello pot and kettle.

Dean finds Adam where he expects to, looking just about how he expected him to look, in other words worked over by the almighty hand of an angel of the lord. They’re such predictable little punk bitches. 

Adam’s limply curled into a fetal position and blood is collecting in the corner of his mouth, and his body is loose when Dean rolls him over. “Adam, hey. Hey.”

“You came for me,” he whispers incredulously, eyes all big and wide. Dean tugs him up a little, presses the blade between his hands, allows a palm to tousle over Adam’s dirty blonde hair.

“Yeah, well, you’re family.”

“Dean, it’s a trap,” he whispers again. Probably can’t talk any louder than that, probably grates on his throat with every word. Fucking malicious punk bitches. 

“Yeah, I kinda figured.”

That’s all he intends to say, so it's lucky it’s all he’s allowed Zachariah moves up behind them all angel sneaky. “Dean, please. Did you really think it would be that easy?”

Dean gets up slow, turns slow, circles around Zachariah slow like it’s an accident. “Hope springs eternal, right?”

“Some would say that, but you know what I would say? Patience is a virtue.”  He’s a smug little bastard, arrogant and sure and Dean hopes he stays that way long enough to get himself killed. “I mean, I thought I was downsized for sure.” He goes on, blathering away, Jeeze did anyone like to hear themselves talk as much as that hot-air filled douche-bag? “And for us, a firing...pretty damn literal. But I should have trusted the boss man. It's all playing out like he said...You, me, your hemorrhaging brothers.”

He waves a hand in Adam’s direction carelessly and the boy’s hunching over, a thin cry yanked out of him through gritted teeth. Zachariah makes a wide arch with the other and Sammy’s flying in the room, thudding up against the opposite wall and making his own gurgling sounds of pain.

“Oh Sam, how delightful it is for you to join us.” Sam burbles some more and thick drops of blood ooze their way out between his lips.  

Dean doesn’t ask for him to stop, he doesn’t beg, he doesn’t plead, he drops his head instead and thinks ‘I believe. I believe.’ He’d told Sam that was enough, it has to be. ‘I believe.’

 “So what is it, Dean? What do you say, hmm? You finally ready to make the right decision? You know there's no other choice. There’s never been a choice. “

 “No there hasn’t, has there.”

Zachariah pounces on it, eyes blazing. “Then say it, put an end to all this and do what you’re told for once!”

“Okay.”

“What? I’m afraid I didn’t hear that.”

“Yes! Fine! Yes!” 

The smile that comes is enough to put him off agreeing even if he had been serious. “There’s a good boy,” Zachariah purrs.

They’ve circled around, Sam is now on their left, Adam is on the ground behind him. ‘I believe,’ he thinks once more for a little extra oomph. 

“But first, give hell a little hello for me, would you?”

“What are you talk--”

Adam surges up from the floor and rams the Enochian blade through Zachariah with everything he’s got. Almost literally; the boy is falling to the floor the blade running the full length of Zachariah’s torso with his body-weight.  

Shit. Christ. Fuck. God. Dean drops down beside him, panting like he’d run a marathon, feels as if he has. He’s shaking. Sammy is too, there opposite them. Hold that thought, all three of them are shaking, hard, full-bodied,  relief, fear, adrenaline they have nowhere to put. A chuckle bursts from someone and then all three of them are laughing until they can’t anyone or else they’ll just stop breathing.

“Can angels go to hell?” Sam asks breathless.

“Satan did, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, I guess there is that.”

Dean leans over to Adam who’s still clutching the dagger between his fists. He’s honestly a little worried the kid is gonna slice off something he shouldn’t. “Can you walk?”

 “Yeah,” Adam says.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

 

***+++***

They’re in the Impala, they’re driving back to Bobby’s in the Impala. Sam has never been so ecstatic to put those two sentences together. There’s still Cas to worry about (and you know, Lucifer) but he hadn’t expected to see this car again, all three of them still in control of all their bodily functions.

“Did you see,” Adam rasps from the back seat. Some of the fear has rubbed away leaving behind awe. “I full on luke-skywalkered his ass. Total annihilation. Take that you bat-winged fork-tongued sons of bitches! Oh God, the rush!”

Sam glances back at him in the rear view mirror and can’t help the smile.

Adam pauses his tirade long enough to frown. It’s so freakin’ Dean it’s ridiculous. “What?”

“Nothing.” If he starts to laugh again he’s not going to be able to stop. “I just never thought I’d be this ecstatic to have two Deans in my life.” Sam has a little brother, the coolness of that has just kicked in.

“Aww Sammy you care,” Dean coos.

“Yea, I think it’s all the internal injuries, don’t worry it’ll pass.”

“Hey guys, thanks for coming for me. What I said earlier about not giving a damn? I’m so-- “

“Stow it kid. Doesn’t matter, we’re brothers.”

“Yeah, Dean’s right, we don’t need an apology. That’s what family does.”

It’s a long drive without Cas’ transportation skills, so technically they notice he’s gone before they reach Bobby’s but there’s something about opening Bobby’s front door and realizing.

It’s so weird. The angel didn’t exactly hang around, and when he did he was so damned stoic and quiet it was really kind of hard not to forget he was there sometimes…still here they are and Cas’ absence is definitely very much felt.

“And so, what? What we’re looking for is another anti-Christ?” Sam not happy with Dean’s new plan.

Bobby’s not happy with Dean’s new plan. Pretty much the only one happy with Dean’s (even Dean doesn’t seem that thrilled) new plan is the creature that sunk him into a coma for what apparently was only twenty-four hours on the outside, but two weeks on the inside. It’s not looking so good.

“‘Another?” Adam  asks from his seat on the floor. They’re all pretty sprawled out on every available piece of half-comfortable furniture that’s not being used to prop up some ancient tomb or other.

“Apparently they’re more common than your average special edition happy meals with collectible toys inside,“ Dean says.

“We’ve already met one in the form of a twelve year old boy,” Sam adds on in explanation.

“Yeah, this one is a little further across the pond than our last was.”

Bobby has a nonstop scowl on his face. Sam can feel Dean’s one more wise crack away from getting smacked. 

 “And why are we looking for another Anti-Christ?”

“Because Lucifer is a big bad, sure, but he’s a big bad that started out as an angel. And Angels can be killed. But in order to get close enough to kill him without turning Sammy into a Lucifer based meat-suit, we’re gonna need some extra help.”

“I don’t think it’s gonna be that simple, Dean.” 

Dean gave him a look that said No,shit, Sherlock,  exactly what part of that sounded simple? And then Sam slid his line of sight to the right and saw an identical You think, brainiac?  on Adam’s face and just about broke out in hysterical giggles. He was never going to get used to having another sibling…a mini-Dean no less. It was freaking creepy. In an odd gut warming sort of way.

“Yeah, well, where’s the fun in simple,” Dean finally asks, a small smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. “But I say, let’s find ourselves an Anti-Christ. Who’s in?”

 

***+++***

_Five months later_

Dean turned the collar up on his jacket as he entered, fingers toying briefly with the worn leather in a tell he wouldn’t allow himself once he crossed the threshold of the bar – pardon, the pub, -- that separated the normal humans from the stick-waving super-charged oz-freaks. It was a little warm to be wearing it at all, but the lapels concealed the .45 tucked in the back of his jeans, and going in without the comforting weight of it was unthinkable. Even with the blade in his boot he’d have felt naked.

Actually, even with them both he felt more vulnerable than a fifteen year old virgin at a parole party.

Werewolves, zombies, vampires, hell boogeymen from under the bed – those things he’d dealt with, he knew. But natural-born wizards and a freakin’ magical community? Humans with superpowers? He wants whoever put the extra spices in the special punch to please go fuck themselves. No, really, anytime now back to reality.

Sam’s voice came in small and tinny and right there in his ear. “I still don’t see why you are the front man,” he groused.

“Because, Sammy, everyone knows you catch more flies with sticky-tape than a gigantic mesh swatter.“

“That’s sugar, asshat. And for your information, I am the charming, personable one.”

“No, you’re the overly emo, hug-and-hold-me one. If this guy has even the slightest hint of a y chromosome, your touchy feely new age metrosexualism will scare him away before we even get to the offing satan part of our little plan.”

Sammy snorted and it was friendly and light. These last few months have been some of the calmest of Dean’s life despite the Devil.

“Besides, as a newly minted big brother, it’s your job to look after the littlest Winchester.” 

He tuned Sam’s answer out because he’s at the bar, pub, whatever, now. When you’re in a pub do you call the bartender the pub-tender? The pub-carer? Why don’t any of these drinks look like something someone could actually consume? Butterbeer? Firewhisky?

Dean pointed to something randomly and figured, what the hell, he’d sustained himself on purple nurples before he could handle magic firefly liquor.

He found himself waiting for something magical to happen, absently fingering the talisman Bobby gave him that allowed him to be here in this place at all even with its anti-normal wards, as if rubbing the thing would make the magic happen. So far nothing; the wait time’s no faster either.  

Dean downed his drink and signaled for another before his taste buds had a chance to register the flavor, he wasn’t there to enjoy the alcohol; even so it wasn’t that bad.

Fifteen minutes and four drinks later and it turned out the barkeep’s not that chatty, and Dean is getting a little looser than he expected, time to move this show on the road.

“So ..uh...I’m looking for Harry Potter.”

The bartender gave a little snort. “Aren’t we all, lad?”

Okay. Unexpected. 

“I was told he would be here tonight?”

The barkeep shrugged a little. “Might be. Harry goes when and where he likes.” What a helpful guy.

“When’s the last time he _liked_ to come here?”

“What’s it to you, then?”

“About this much.” Dean handed over a bunch of monopoly money, made all the more ludicrous because they were metal coins, but whatever he wasn’t the wizard expert; there was a reason why Bobby had put them in touch with that Patil woman.

Bribery accepted, the bartender plunked himself across from Dean, sidling in a little closer and yanking the volume down on his voice so Dean had to strain to hear over the happy-drunk noises around him. “Nigh on a year. But I hear tell if you really want a gander at our boy savior, check in with the primary down the street the one for the war  orphans.”

Good to know money talked everywhere. Dean flashed a smile, swallowed down the last of his fizzy high alcohol-content fuzzywallaby whillerby whizz.. his drink, and was off.  “Got that Sammy?”

“That and the directions. We’re almost there, Dean.”

He knew Sam wasn’t just talking about the school, he felt it too, it’d taken them nearly a year and half an ocean but they were closing in on the end and it wasn’t nearly as tragic as the trailers made out.

***+++***

 Harry lived a quiet life since the war. It’s pretty set really, each day began and ended roughly in the same manner and there wasn’t a whole lot of variation to worry through. He volunteered three days out of seven with the orphanage – er, pardon, the primary for children who have been orphaned by the great battle of Hogwarts circa 1997.

He visited Hermione at her office in the clouds every now and again, built so many levels above ground even he got a tad nervous gazing out the windows. But how else was she supposed to look out for the best interests of the brown barbaloot if she didn’t work the system from the inside? Really, Harry do be serious. He wondered sometimes if she had a hard time swallowing her own shite, and if the girl he used to know is even still alive buried under all than metric tonne of bureaucratic bullshite as she was.

He ate at the same restaurant every day. Take away is just about all he can stomach, the smell of burning flesh still stings his nose and turns his intestines from the inside to the outside when he sees fire these days. He even dropped off to sleep around the same time each night.

To be perfectly honest, Harry was fucking bored out of his mind. He hadn’t expected that at all. The rest, the sanity of safe living, he hadn’t expected it to be so…dull.

Not that he wanted another war on his hands or regretted a single minute of offing that psychotic bastard.

No, he did regret it. He regretted taking so long.

But he had just expected life to be a little more… upbeat perhaps. Unpredictable, maybe. Lively. Yes, that was the word.

So perhaps he couldn’t be faulted for immediately being intrigued with the epitome of exciting walking into his life at half four on a Friday evening.

It helped that the epitome of exciting is bloody fit too.

At first Harry only sensed him with that tickle you get behind your neck when someone stares too long and you can’t see from where they’re staring. The children are warded, the whole school puts Hogwarts to shame in paranoia and a study in an over-application of anti-terrorism wards. Though perhaps Hogwarts wasn’t always the best example. Seven solid years of attacks in one form or another.

Point was: Harry wasn’t really worried that the starer was someone harmful. Probably one the new staff come to see the Boy Saviour (although at twenty-nine, Harry thought it was about time he was elevated from Boy status) interact with the children again. What a thrilling sight, look Harry Potter can actually function socially, how un-saviour-ish of him. With toddlers too, will wonders never cease?

If it weren’t for Teddy and Ron, most days Harry thinks he really would prefer the life of a hermit, boredom be damned.

The eyes, the feeling of being watched by this particular person, it felt…familiar. Comforting almost, like a kindred spirit checking in, odd that.

It was only when he rolled himself out from under the pile of clambering children that he realized the bloke didn’t look like anyone he’d ever seen around here before. It took a second to fully extricate himself, they’re sticky little buggers, but by the time Harry’d risen to his full height and adjusted his glasses he is absolutely positive the bloke is not only someone he’d never seen before …he’s also someone Harry would like to see again.

***+++***

So. It wasn’t that Dean had some preconceived notion of what an Antichrist should look like exactly, the last one they’d met was a twelve year old with an attitude, but the mess of black hair that rose from a sea of giggling and clinging children …not what he was expecting. He’d seen him before, of course, in the memories but it was a flash here, the side of a face there. He knew him somewhere on the periphery of his mind but it all felt knew, looking at him here, with no shadows or time constraints to get in the way. And he knew Harry was only a year younger than Dean himself, all the research they did revealed that at least, but  guessed some part of him was still expecting the little boy that Harry had been.

“Harry Potter,” Dean called. His stomach throbbed, he hadn’t known that was possible.  

“Depends on who’s asking,” the man said but his tone was friendly and a wide grin lit up his face like the sun rising.

Dean’s stomach throbbed now fluttered. Like the sun rising? Seriously?

“Dean Winchester,” Dean extended a hand and Harry grasped it immediately, firm, solid, more of an embrace than a shake. “I need to speak with you, Mr. Potter, in private.”

“Harry, please. I’m only Potter to blokes who hate my guts.” A thumb swiped over Dean’s knuckles, twice, sending a shock of shivers up Dean’s arm, and then Harry was releasing. And Dean was standing there with his hand tingling, and his heart thumping, and his respiration gone short and shallow like he was either on his way to cardiac failure or about to come in his pants. Speaking of, thank fuck for leather and denim, otherwise he would’ve turned the preschool a lot more r-rated than he was comfortable.

He hadn’t been attracted to another guy this fast in a very long time. If ever.

Harry ducked his head shyly, a blush rapidly working its way up his neck and cheeks, the grin still present but turned soft, hopeful. And Dean knew that was going to be the extent of his invitation, Harry Potter didn’t get any more forward than this because he took risks, sure, on his life not his heart. And Dean remembered a little boy who prayed every night without praying…for someone to love him, a home and a family.

So yeah, maybe this wasn’t fast. In some ways, Dean has known Harry Potter for a very long time.

“Harry it is,” he stumbled around a thick tongue. “Call me Dean,” Dean had to seriously physically restrain himself from adding ‘Better yet, call me anything you want.’ Seriously. His thigh actually hurt from how hard he was pinching himself.

“Forgive me for saying but…you seem so familiar, have we met before?”

Dean literally bit his tongue on ‘only in our dreams.’ What was he doing here?

This was a job. No matter how much he thought he knew Potter (or would like to know Potter) this is a job. This innocent boy-next door fresh-faced kid, with the smallest of dimples in his left cheek and an adorable blush that tinges his cheeks light pink not red, he isn’t innocent. And he’s definitely not a kid.

He was the freakin’ Anti-Christ.

And he thought Sam was bad with the monster-fucking. Dean didn’t have any right to talk.

“Never mind, we couldn’t have I would have remembered you. Dean, then,” Harry said, babbled a little. He smiled again and that damn dimple winked at him. Dean didn’t even like dimples. Sam has dimples. Dad had dimples.

Oh God, now he’s thinking about wincest.

Well, at least that killed the burgeoning erection.

“This is a school,” Harry continued. Unfortunately, there’s not really any place private in the fullest sense of that term. If it’s something that needs to be handled sensitively, we’d probably be better off popping into my flat for a mo. It’s not far from here.”

And …there went the stiffy, right back, like he was fourteen again and introducing himself to the wonderful world of Busty Asian Beauties.

Would it be totally bigoted to say Harry’s eyes were the most beautiful almond shape he’d ever seen? Did that mean he had a type?

“Dean? Did you just get propositioned by an Anti-Christ?” Sam sounded a little shrill in his ear and Dean knew it was because laughter doesn’t translate well over microphone. Little bitch. He hadn’t laughed when he was all Oh Madison, Oh Ruby, let me love your man-eating little monster selves. Fucker.

Dean ignored his brother, resolutely. “That might be a good idea, actually.”

Harry smiled again, ducked his head a little bashfully, and Dean saw a little boy in a coat closet imagining a better life that had yet to come. Saw a young man with unimaginable power who chose to spend his days reading stories and tumbling around on the floor with children of a war that had stripped him of everything he’d fought so hard to protect, he looked at Harry and saw a future without Lucifer without Demons without Angels or Destiny or four-letter word Fate. He looked at Harry and he saw Harry, and it was enough.

The End. 


End file.
